ZeroTheHero
Well-known member
- Joined
- 7 Dec 2017
- Messages
- 9,259
Re: his signings.I don't buy we've made poor signings.
We have invested in a Championship midfielder (Hanson) and a starlet being chased by Leeds - Whyte and Hanson are not poor signings. We've gone after and secured Holmes and Carruthers. Cameron Norman is actually a good signing too. Garbutt, Browne have come in from the Prem, actually think they are going to be good additions - if he allowed Luke to settle in. Sam Smith was doing OK at Reading before he arrived.
He's made a stinker in Mackie.
As for Mitchell, his agent is the same as Hanson & that signing happened very very quickly.
My last point on Mitchell, he's actually not too bad for a kid keeper, who also has been thrown under the bus at times, we're not conceding big numbers of goals - so even if Eastwood had been playing, would the results have been vastly different? The problem is bar two league game, we've been unable to score more than one goal in a game - we lost one of those fixtures too!
The above makes it even more reason why change should happen.
I did say 'on the whole'! The proof of the pudding etc.
Hanson may have potential - but he's hardly tearing up trees at the moment is he? I suspect he was bought as much as some sort of 'investment' as a player to be pivotal immediately. As a midfield lynch pin, he isn't one. I hope I could add the word 'yet' to that sentence, but can't right now.
Mackie - as you say, a stinker. Unfit and quite possibly past it.
McMahon - another poor addition. He's got no speed at all, and gets caught out of position constantly.
Whyte - Yes, a good signing. Has definte potential and is showing some class right now (why he was taken off on Tuesday I have no idea at all!)
Norman - Again he has done well. But now dropped and replaced with McMahon. I'm not sure he and Whyte were expected to be first team regulars (McMahon and Carruthers were, I think, first picks). But fair play, two decent signings.
Browne - a loanee. He's apparently got two bad knees and has shown flashes of talent but 'the best player in L1'? Certainly NOT the most effective and will spend time on and off the treatment table all season.
Carruthers - a loanee. Who knows? Unlucky with the injury certainly, but when I saw him in pre-season at MK he was not very impressive.
Holmes - a loanee. Undoubtedly a talented player, now approaching the latter part of his career. Requires regular times out, injections and is quit obviously getting very frustrated with what is going on around him.
Sam Smith - a loanee. For a player we were 'chasing all summer', he has featured very little and is being kept out of the first team by our very own Ussain Bolt. He's shown bits and pieces again, but hasn't really impressed.
Garbutt - a loanee. He had a horrible start, and has improved from terrible to 'no worse than the rest of them'. Not exactly a stand out player - lord alone knows how much of his ridiculous salary we are paying for a pretty average left back.
Mitchell - a loanee. He wasn't really a summer signing, but as you say for a kid keeper he is OK. The question with him is more what the bloody hell we are doing with Shearer and Stevens on the books if between them they cannot cover for the injury of the first team keeper!
So to summarise,
We have made two good signings, one where the jury is very much out and two very poor ones. (Not counting the likes of Tsun Dai - who along with Lopes, James and Spasov - is listed as a first team player on the OWS!)
Loanees (who you would have to hope made an immediate impact because they are not 'development' players and will be gone in April at the latest, so let's judge them on that): One who has made an impact, three who haven't, one who got injured very early and a young keeper who is presumably only here because of the massive cock-up in the keeper department who has dome 'OK'.
That looks like three successes out of ten, plus Mitchell and the elusive Dai, and qualifies in my book as 'poor on the whole'. What is equally worrying is that some of the players who haven't performed look fairly good on paper. Which has to be a management/training/tactical failure?